Before spending six years at Cleburne —
three as the boys soccer coach — Lundy spent four seasons as the head soccer
coach at Class 3A Gainesville, which played in a Class 4A district because of
the UIL not having a 3A classification for soccer.

But he’s never stepped into a situation
like the one he is entering now, taking over for Marc Koke as the Argyle boys
soccer coach and returning to his roots of coaching a smaller school in a pond
full of big fish.

The situation is similar because of
size, but when he started at Gainesville, the Leopards were coming off an 0-16
season and had to play in a district with state powerhouse Wichita Falls Rider.

This situation is different though, as
Argyle is two years removed from being one win away from reaching the Class 4A
state tournament.

“These kids are already there,” Lundy
said of his new team. “I don’t have to get their minds around that. They know
they can beat teams they’re not supposed to beat. You don’t have to motivate
the kids when you can play that underdog card. They know people aren’t picking
them to win.”

In his four seasons at Gainesville,
Lundy’s team had three second-place finishes in district play and won a
district title, ending Rider’s 18-year run of district championships.

Argyle finished the 2012 season with a
9-11-8 mark after marching all the way to the regional final in 2011. The
Eagles finished fourth in their district but still went three rounds deep after
dramatic wins in the first two rounds of the playoffs.

They did all of that without one of
their young stars, Ian Sadler, who was expected to play soccer but injured his
knee in the state football final in December.

Lundy said he hasn’t had a chance to sit
down and talk with Sadler, who is an elite prospect in both football and
soccer, but thinks he will be back on the soccer field for the 2013 season.

“To the credit of the team last year,
they lost Sadler and they still made the playoffs, and then you can add that
piece back in and be that much better,” Lundy said. “Thankfully he’s young and
he has a couple more years.”

Argyle’s 2011 squad began to catch
Lundy’s eye when he was at Cleburne.

“When they started doing well a couple
of years ago and made the run to the regional final, I started following them
and kids like Ian Sadler and Cole Hedlund to see what they were doing,” Lundy
said. “They’re close enough to the metroplex that they’re exposed to a lot of
club soccer at a young age. It was just neat to see a smaller 3A school
competing against some of those bigger teams.”

It didn’t take long for Lundy to catch
Argyle football coach and athletic director Todd Rodgers’ eye after Koke
submitted his resignation to accept a position as a middle school coordinator
with Northwest ISD.

Rodgers was searching for not only a
head soccer coach, but also a defensive line coach for football — the two
positions Koke filled — and a teacher certified to teach social studies and
geography, which is what Koke taught.

Lundy and three other applicants fit the
criteria.

“I was very fortunate to find that,”
Rodgers said. “I was basically searching for the coaching unicorn and it ended
up falling in my lap. I really believe I found the perfect match.”

Lundy coached boys soccer and was the
defensive line coach at all three of his previous stops: Cleburne, Gainesville
and Borger, his alma mater.

“I am a soccer coach who happens to be a
very good football coach because growing up in the Panhandle we didn’t have
high school soccer,” Lundy said. “We played club until about [age] 17. They
didn’t have high school soccer in Borger until 1996. I grew up playing football
for the school because that’s what I could do, and I’m passionate about it.”

Rodgers said he set up the soccer job
specifically to be aligned with an assistant football post to encourage the
sharing of athletes — such as Hedlund and Sadler.

“That position is connected because
that’s the way I like it,” Rodgers said. “I don’t want programs to be
independent and isolated, because that leans toward kids being single-sport
athletes. I want our kids overly exposed to as many experiences as they can
have.”

Lundy shares that thought.

“I’m back in a place with some crossover
athletes like Sadler,” Lundy said. “You get some of those guys, and I think
winning leads to winning. Yes, there’s something to be said for today’s game of
specializing, but it saddens me with the [soccer] academies not letting kids
play for their school. It’s neat to have some crossover athletes, and they win
in every sport. That’s just how it is here.”

Koke began at Argyle coaching the boys
and girls teams for one season before Argyle hired Jennifer Goodpaster to take
over the girls program, allowing Koke to concentrate on the boys. The next
season, Argyle was in the regional final.

“Coach Koke came in and listened and we
had to focus on the positives and not the win column,” Rodgers said of the
early years. “We had a couple of tough years as far as wins and losses and then
the kids grew up and we had that explosion on the playoff scene, and that was a
tribute to growing the program. He was able to take a plan and implement it,
and it worked out well for us. He left us on very good terms.”

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